Ducati MotoGP

How Ducati Makes Its Most Extreme Bikes

It’s incredibly exciting -- the bikes regularly reach speeds of over 200 mph, and if a racer makes one wrong move, he’s liable to fly off his bike, tumble a few times and then get right back up (if he’s lucky), find his bike and continue on.

If you aren’t familiar with it, you might think MotoGP is just a less exciting version of Formula 1 racing, but you’d be wrong.

It’s incredibly exciting — the bikes regularly reach speeds of over 200 mph, and if a racer makes one wrong move, he’s liable to fly off his bike, tumble a few times and then get right back up (if he’s lucky), find his bike and continue on. It’s remarkable.

Of course, this isn’t always what happens. While we were in Austin, courtesy of Tissot, for the MotoGP, the Moto 3 race (the lowest tier of MotoGP, with bikes at 250 cc as opposed to the premier class’ 1,000 cc) was red flagged as Dutch rider Jasper Iwema wiped out hard on lap 12 and was airlifted off the track after landing on his neck (he was later reported to be OK). It’s this kind of mayhem that keeps fans on the edge of their seats. Of course, nobody wants to see anyone crash, but, boy, can you not look away when there is one.

With this in mind, how do teams get their bikes in top form and what kind of design goes into them to shave mere tenths of a second from their time? For our purposes, we’ll look at Ducati, the Italian bike manufacturer synonymous with MotoGP racing.

Ducati’s and all other Grand Prix bikes from the likes of Honda or Yamaha are purpose-built, purebred racing machines you can’t buy at your local Ducati dealership and are too extreme to be street legal on public roads. So although Nicky Hayden rode the new Ducati Desmosedici at Austin, it wasn’t the version available to the general public.